Disclaimer:
No I don't use Bitcoin or Advocate the use of any kind of crypto-currency. - webthing

Do you already have ideas that you want to develop on Ethereum? Maybe you need help and some funds to bring them to life, but who would lend money to someone they don’t trust?

Using Ethereum, you can create a contract that will hold a contributor's money until any given date or goal is reached. Depending on the outcome, the funds will either be released to the project owners or safely returned back to the contributors. All of this is possible without requiring a centralized arbitrator, clearing house or having to trust anyone.

You can even use the token you created earlier to keep track of the distribution of rewards.

Ether is a necessary element -- a fuel -- for operating the distributed application platform Ethereum. It is a form of payment made by the clients of the platform to the machines executing the requested operations. To put it another way, ether is the incentive ensuring that developers write quality applications (wasteful code costs more), and that the network remains healthy (people are compensated for their contributed resources).

If you just want to test the technology, you probably don't need real ether. Download the latest Wallet app and switch to the Test Network.

How are ethers created?

The total supply of ether and its rate of issuance was decided by the donations gathered on the 2014 presale. The results were roughly:

60 million ether created to contributors of the presale
12 Million (20% of the above) were created to the development fund, most of it going to early contributors and developers and the remaining to the Ethereum Foundation
5 ethers are created every block (roughly 15-17 seconds) to the miner of the block
2-3 ethers are sometimes sent to another miner if they were also able to find a solution but his block wasn't included (called uncle/aunt reward)

Is the ether supply infinite?

No. According to the terms agreed by all parties on the 2014 presale, issuance of ether is capped at 18 million ether per year (this number equals 25% of the initial supply). This means that while the absolute issuance is fixed, the relative inflation is decreased every year. In theory if this issuance was kept indefinitely then at some point the rate of new tokens created every year would reach the average amount lost yearly (by misuse, accidental key lost, death of holders etc) and there would reach an equilibrium.

But the rate is not expected to be kept: sometime in 2017 Ethereum will be switched from Proof of Work to a new consensus algorithm under development, called Casper that is expected to be more efficient and require less mining subsidy. The exact method of issuance and which function it will serve is an area of active research, but what can be guaranteed now is that the current maximum is considered a ceiling and

the new issuance under casper will not exceed it (and is expected to be much less) and whatever method is ultimately picked to issue, it will be a decentralized smart contract that will not give preferential treatment to any particular group of people and whose purpose is to benefit the overall health and security of the network.

Who needs ether?

Developers who intend to build apps that will use the ethereum blockchain. Users who want to access and interact with smart contracts on the ethereum blockchain.

There were more than 900 cryptocurrencies available over the internet as of 25 June 2017 and growing. New cryptocurrency can be created any time. But only a few ones such as Bitcoin, Ethereum etc.are highly notable currently.

It's very risky but sometimes could be a good win. There are dozen of newcoming crypto currencies everyday but most of them are trash. But despite that I've managed to gain a sufficient profit from a chinese ico. It was about 1000% from $50 to $500. So I advice to check ico reviews sometimes who knows maybe you would be lucky enough to find the next big thing.

And such exist in general?) In my opinion, it is very strange to deal with this, especially considering the specifics of handling all cryptocurrencies. I agree, you just need to buy, but you need to know where to do it and when. I usually use the exchanger https://hiribi.com/, because for this it is not necessary to apply special efforts and it has simple interaction with my PayPal